


Cruising Altitude

by BrooklynWrites



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-19 23:50:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14248494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynWrites/pseuds/BrooklynWrites
Summary: It's a long flight from South Korea home to Toronto, and Tessa can't sleep, so she thinks.





	Cruising Altitude

They weren’t even quite halfway through the flight from Seoul to Toronto. Six hours behind them, still seven or so left to go. Tessa had no idea what time it was, if time matters much at all on transpacific flights, but it felt late. The flight crew had dimmed the lights a while back, and the cabin was mostly quiet. One young mother paced the aisle with a bald-headed baby fussing in her arms, and the flight attendants clustered in the light from the galley talked softly, paper mugs of tea in their hands, but from what Tessa could see everyone else was asleep, or at least dozing in front of their screens, drowsy on drinks and jet lag. 

She wished for the millionth time in her life that her brain would calm down enough to let her join them all in dreamland. She’d had two glasses of wine, and when that didn’t work she’d watched two slow-moving, confusing Korean movies without the subtitles in hopes of knocking herself out by sheer boredom. She was exhausted and knew she was coming down with something that was going to be killer on her sinuses. But still, she was awake. She’d chalk it up to leftover adrenaline from everything they’d just been through in Pyeongchang, and that could have been it, a little bit, but it was more than that too. It was the fear of flying she’d never managed to fully shake despite years and years now of regular long-haul flights. It was the knowledge that as soon as they touched down at Pearson she was going to have cameras in her face again, reporters digging for quotes, kids asking for selfies, and then yet another flight home to London followed by whatever comes next when you’re done with competitive figure skating and have to figure out what your life looks like without it at almost 29. And maybe even with all that her trouble was still mostly that she’d just always been a bad sleeper. Her mother liked to remind her that she’d hardly taken naps, even as a toddler, preferring to cry her way through her exhaustion instead even as the other kids drifted off. Tessa’s cried quite a bit these last few weeks too, but at least most of those were happy tears. 

Someone who does not share her difficult relationship with sleep? Scott. Scott who, upon boarding the plane in Seoul, had first written a few postcards to buddies back home even though she told him it didn’t count because they weren’t technically in Korea anymore, then eaten the entire tray of whatever rice dish they’d been given for dinner minus the dessert, which he’d offered to her, and topped it all off with half of the snacks she’d packed to last them the whole flight. Scott who had watched exactly two thirds of a superhero movie that was streaming before quipping that he’d already missed two years of pop culture while they were training and wasn’t about to catch up in a day anyway so why bother trying because the movie was ‘kinda terrible, Tess, you’d hate it,’ turned it off, and promptly fell asleep, his shoes kicked loose beneath his seat and his head in her lap, one arm curled across her knees. Even though it made it hard for her to reach the bag of snacks on the floor and impossible to get up to the bathroom, she didn’t mind. She liked to watch him sleep. To admire the line of his jaw and count the freckles on his forearms. He was always trusting, always unselfconscious, but she felt it magnified when he was like this, when he wasn’t moving, dancing, joking, flirting with her and with the world. Asleep like this he wasn’t Scott Moir, prince of Canada, ice dance champion. He was just rumpled and snoring a little and hers. 

By the end of her second Korean drama, he was still pleasantly warm and heavy against her. She ran her fingers through his hair where it was starting to curl at the ends. It was getting long again, and she knew she should remind him to get it cut before tour started, before he didn’t have time because they were on yet another flight back to Asia, otherwise by June she’d be lending him hair ties again for dance rehearsals. She smiled to herself. She should remind him, but she won’t. He’s a grown adult, despite the occasional evidence to the contrary. He could go get a haircut when he wanted to. If he doesn’t because he knows she likes it long, because he does too when she buries her hands in it, then who is she to comment? She knew Marie would mother him about it, would only half-jokingly threaten to sit him down in the office at the rink with a pair of scissors, and that was plenty. 

Someone a few rows ahead of them pulled out a phone then, and in the glow of the screen Tessa could see it was an older man in a suit. She considered what could have driven him to wear a suit of all things for such a long trip when everyone else around them was in yoga pants and hoodies or jeans at least, and then for one quick moment she thought he might be about to take a picture of her, of them, of the two of them together like this, and it reminded her all over again of how badly she wanted to keep their little bubble from leaking onto the internet. But the man in the suit was just updating a round of Words with Friends. If he had any idea that the two kids cuddling in Row F were the most decorated figure skaters in Olympic history and the current subject of fanatical international speculation, he hadn’t given any indication. Tessa let out the breath she’d been holding and rolled her ankles in circles, one at a time. She eyed the other passengers, but they too were all still asleep, still seemingly completely uninterested. The flight attendants knew who they were though, she was sure of that much, and she wondered if any of them had a twitter account or a friend with a gossip blog. Wondered how long she could keep the wolves at bay. She ran a finger gently down the curve of Scott’s ear and sighed. 

 

And the thing is? Through all the endless press, they hadn’t lied, she and Scott. Not really. They truly weren’t a couple, not in the way everyone wanted them to admit. The idea of calling him her boyfriend was so absurd it made her want to cackle hysterically every time someone even so much as hinted at it in an interview. And she knew it all came back to what people saw when they watched them on the ice. So much fire and sex, and they assumed it must come from someplace real, that it must be like that all the time between the two of them. She hadn’t lied when she said it was a little insulting to dismiss so much of their hard work as simply chemistry and luck. But the other thing is, those same people don’t have it entirely wrong either. 

She knew for breathless, euphoric fact that they worked well together off the ice in the sense everyone presumed they did. She can look at him and know he’s capable of heating her blood and setting it racing, of making her giggle while he tries to strip her out of sweaty leggings and sports bras. They hadn’t done it much, recently at least, whatever people would believe - too much training, too much everything else pulling them every which way to have the energy for more than dinner and an hour on the couch with a book every night- but the muscle memory was still there. He’d caught the corner of her mouth in a kiss - accidentally, she thinks - sometime during their post-gold celebrations, and she’d instinctively reached for more, wanted more, and he’d raised his eyebrows and smiled softly at her as if to say, ‘yes, but there’s cameras everywhere, T’ before pulling her back into a hug. She’d laughed into his neck and he’d squeezed her ribs, and later, much later, when the cameras and their friends and families were all gone, he’d backed her up against the door of her room and kissed her for real. Then he‘d waltzed her around the room singing nonsense lyrics about being on top of the world before pulling her down to the bed with him and making her forget how tired she was, making her forget what continent they were on. She knew it was a dangerous thing, this spark they had, that it had hurt people they’d cared about, people they’d been with and even claimed to love. Their therapist would probably do excited cartwheels if they agreed to talk about it. But even if they didn’t openly address it much, the whys of how they kept ending up back in each other’s beds, it somehow made sense to the two of them on a level they couldn’t articulate, even just to each other. She got frustrated and knew he did too when the world tried to make them explain. 

She’d started rubbing soft circles behind his ear with her thumb, and she would have been afraid of waking him if she didn’t already know he slept like the dead. It was why he was always able to spring up in the morning, rested and ready for practice. Able to bring her coffee while she gradually, begrudgingly accepted the reality of being awake. She’d always envied him that ability and been fascinated by it all in one. She can remember being so young and driving to and from rinks in the backs of their parents’ cars, always trying to find new ways to get comfortable enough to catch those extra few minutes of sleep while the morning traffic report played quietly on the radio. She can remember being not that much older and dozing off against the passenger side window of Scott’s car as they made a break for the border some Sunday afternoons in Michigan just to feel less homesick for a few hours, only waking when he gently touched her thigh and said that she needed to find her passport and started cracking jokes about whether the immigration officials would accuse him of whisking her off to elope again this time. 

Those are the sorts of things other people don’t see if they only watch them skate. That twenty years of history, of every single minute of her life lived up against someone else’s. She’d spent more time with Scott than with her own brothers certainly, and yet he wasn’t like a brother to her. Except for when he was. When he could dredge up things to tease her about that had happened when she was seven and he was nine but that she couldn’t find in her own memories, no matter how hard she reached for them. There wasn’t a time before Scott was in her life, as far as her head was concerned, and maybe her heart too. 

He wasn’t a cousin either, except for when he was. When he fit in at family reunions and Sunday dinners and New Year’s Eve parties like he’d always been a part of the gang, because he had been. He had a designated seat at the table and an automatic place on a team for the post-Thanksgiving cousins and uncles hockey game. Her mom always had his favorite beer in the garage; her grandmother sent him Christmas gifts. 

Maybe the fans could see he was her best friend, her confidant and playmate and everything that was good and solid in her life, but they didn’t see the times when none of that was true. Somewhere alongside all the mundane and the bliss lived the memories of every time they’d screamed at each other, on the ice and off, of all the times she’d thought that maybe it would be easier to just walk away and not look back, to not try and contort herself into the sort of person who could get along with him well enough to make it work, the skating or any of the rest of it. But even worse were the times they hadn’t even bothered to yell at each other because they hadn’t said anything at all. They were better now, definitely better, thanks to the advantages of age and experience and the whole team of people invested in keeping them working well together. But whatever new closeness they’ve found, it doesn’t erase it entirely, that knowledge that your favorite person in the world is also responsible for some of your biggest heartbreaks. 

So it was funny to Tessa, those reporters and fans asking if they were dating, if they’re a couple. Maybe she’s read too many classic novels, but it feels to her like those things imply a certain script to follow: the getting-to-know-you dinners and shy first kisses and prepared declarations of intent and affection. None of that applied to them. They’d gone off script two decades ago when his aunt had bribed them with an offer of ice cream to hold hands a few times around the rink. Somewhere deep down, when she’s trying not to panic about the future, she secretly finds it rather thrilling that they’re free to improv their way into something that works for them. She can’t see herself standing next to him at church in a white dress and promising forever, but she also thinks that after everything they’ve had together they don’t need that anyway. They’ve promised each other so much already. They’ve made it through ‘in sickness and in health.’ She isn’t sure where ‘through gold and silver and stumbling during twizzles’ ranks, but it must be at least as good as ‘for better or worse.’ She’s never doubted that he’s in this with her, whatever ‘this’ turns out to be. She’s never doubted that he loves her, in every way a person can mean that. That’s more than lot of people hinged their futures on. 

One of the flight attendants stepped down the aisle then, the tea kettle in her hand, patiently stopping to pour wherever a sleepy arm emerged from behind a blanket or a book. She caught Tessa’s eye and smiled, looked down at Scott and back up again, and for a moment she feared the twitter rumors and gossip feeds again, but the woman only rolled her eyes a little as if to say, ‘men, right?’ and Tessa grinned back, relieved. If only she knew even the half of it. 

She accepted her own paper cup of tea and sipped it slowly, letting the warmth of it relax her, the hand in Scott’s hair stilled now. And maybe it was because she stopped moving or because someone a few rows behind them forgot he had earphones in and asked too loudly for more sugar for the tea, but she could feel it when Scott woke up a few minutes later, his hand on her knee tensing for just a second. She swept the hair off his forehead in response, letting him know that she knew he was awake but that he was under no obligation to move, and he yawned and answered her by drawing little patterns on her leg with his thumb. Eventually he rolled over, rubbed his face into her sweatshirted belly for a second before looking up at her. His eyes were bright in the dim lighting, but she could see the sleep still clinging to him in the softness of his features. 

‘I can hear you thinking all the way down here,’ he said, and smiled a little.

‘I’m trying very hard not to think, believe it or not.’ She felt more than heard his laugh in response, and he picked up the hand she’d left on his forehead and kissed it  
.  
‘I do believe it.’ And if he was less tired and they were in any place less public, she knew he’d probably make some dumb joke about what he could do to get her to stop thinking, but she was also pretty sure just knowing he wanted to make the joke was the same as him actually saying it, so she laughed and leaned down to kiss him, just once, just lightly. He craned his neck up to meet her, whispered, ‘You should get some sleep too, babe’ against her mouth. 

‘I was just fine watching you.’ But she yawned then too, making him raise an eyebrow at her stubbornness. She shrugged in response. ‘I can never sleep on planes, you know that.’ 

‘You can try though.’ He sat up slowly then, his hair sticking out in a riot of static and waves in ways that reminded Tessa of a cartoon character. He put a hand to his head at her amused expression. ‘I know, I need a haircut.’ 

‘I wouldn’t go that far. The Muppet look is working for you.’ She flattened one loose piece behind his left ear.

‘I wouldn’t go advertising you’re into Muppets these days,’ he said, and then he was dropping her empty tea cup onto the floor and taking her by the shoulders, guiding her down until she’s the one curled on her side, her head in his lap, the blanket she’d forgotten about pulled out from one of her bags and tucked in around her. He yawned again somewhere above her head once she was settled. 

‘You didn’t get enough sleep either.’ 

‘No, but I can sleep like this too.’ She felt his body shift as he leaned to rest his head against the window beside him. ‘I also just think I’ll be tired no matter what until I can sleep for twelve hours straight once we’re home. I’ll live until then.’ That was true. They’d both live. Exhaustion or not, it was t-minus just a few hours until it was back to the real world and back to putting on the gold medalist charm. The only relief was that they’d get through it together. 

He smelled like the strange, starchy laundry detergent they’d used in the Olympic Village, and the stale recycled air of airports and planes, and mostly like himself. She closed her eyes and snuggled in closer and felt one warm hand start to gently knead the knots from the back of her neck. 

‘Scott?’

‘Hmm…?’ He hummed, already halfway back to sleep. 

‘Thank you.’ And she meant to say it simply about swapping places, about letting her use him as a pillow and being patient with her when she could never just rest like a normal tired person, but as soon as the words were out she realized it was a thank you for everything. For not asking her to talk about what comes next because it doesn’t matter as long as they’re in it together. For not trying to be her boyfriend, or her brother, or anything else that would never work for them. For all of their strange, wild, wonderful, life.

‘Love you too, Tess.’


End file.
